Peter Herbert - obituary

Peter Herbert was a pioneer of the country house hotel who then turned his
attention to re-creating a forgotten wild garden

Peter Herbert, who has died aged 87, was a pioneer of the country house hotel, and over a period of more than four decades restored and then cared for the forgotten “natural garden” at Gravetye Manor in West Sussex.

The gardens at Gravetye Manor

For much of his career, Herbert was in partnership with Robin Howard, grandson of Stanley Baldwin and founder of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. In 1958 they took over Gravetye Manor, a tired late-16th-century country house near East Grinstead, with a view to turning it into a luxurious hotel.

It was a bold venture for its time — the only existing model was Sharrow Bay in Cumbria, which had opened its doors some five years before — and Herbert later reflected: “Nobody came out of London to eat in those days, and all my friends thought we were absolutely stark raving mad.”

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Run by Herbert and his first wife, Pip, Gravetye became one of Britain’s best-known retreats. It has been rated among the world’s top five country house hotels, and over the years some of the country’s most eminent chefs, among them Marcus Wareing, have worked in its kitchen.

The house and its 1,000-acre estate had been the home of the popular polemical gardening writer William Robinson from 1884 until his death in 1935. Robinson’s book The English Flower Garden went into 15 editions in his lifetime, and he railed ceaselessly against the Victorian predilection for “geometrical gardening” with its great drifts of bedding plants. It is said that on one particularly cold night in 1860, when he was employed as a young gardener tending the geraniums in the greenhouses of an Irish estate, he had thrown open the greenhouse windows and sabotaged the heating system before decamping for London, where he found a job with the Royal Botanic Society in Regent’s Park.

In 1871 he established his own magazine, in which he urged his readers to let roses ramble up into the apple trees, to plant bulbs in the meadow and let the grass grow until mowing time in late summer: “Who would not rather see the waving grass with countless flowers than a close surface without a blossom?” he asked. Meanwhile, at Gravetye, Robinson practised what he preached, creating the kind of “natural” or “wild” garden that has become commonplace today.

By the time Herbert arrived at Gravetye, however, Robinson’s 52-acre creation had all but disappeared. Canadian soldiers, stationed at the house during the Second World War, had dug up the beds of roses and carnations to plant potatoes and leeks. During the 13 years of post-war neglect, brambles had choked much of what remained, and at first Herbert was minded only to tidy up, later recalling: “We didn’t even know there were any paved paths in the flower garden until we started scything it and hitting the stone edges.”

Having rediscovered Robinson’s lost treasure, however, Herbert resolved to restore it, and he was helped in his work by an elderly man who had been one of Robinson’s gardeners, and was able to remember what had been planted where. Thus began a labour of love that endured for more than 40 years. The work was carried out by a head gardener and a team of four or five, paid for out of the profits from the hotel and restaurant. The average annual cost was £50,000.

The son of a hotelier who ran the Mermaid at Rye, East Sussex, Peter George Herbert was born in London on June 11 1926 and educated at Alleyn's, which was evacuated to Lancashire during the Blitz. A gifted oboist, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music; then, after war service in the Army, he trained in hotel management in Ireland, Austria and Britain.

In 1950 Robin Howard invited him to become managing director of the Gore Hotel in Queen’s Gate, Kensington, where — to commemorate the Coronation — they opened “The Elizabethan Room”, one of Britain’s first “themed” restaurants.

Having created a beamed and panelled room harking back to Elizabethan England, Herbert employed out-of-work actors as bards and wenches, and encouraged guests — who ate off wooden platters — to throw their bones in the fireplace. Musicians entertained the diners on lutes and spinets. In 1995 Herbert recalled: “We did all the research on the food, which was absolutely disgusting. And it was marvellous when anyone complained about the food, because you simply said, 'Well, we’re showing you what we ate then.’”

So successful was this formula that Herbert was soon serving 150 guests every night — most of them American — and he subsequently expanded the premises with “The Star Chamber” and “Backstage at The Globe”. He later shipped the whole show, complete with bards and wenches, to North America, Australia, Italy and France. The Gore was eventually sold and the rooms closed in the early Seventies, by which time Herbert was already established at Gravetye Manor.

Herbert was also involved in other ventures. In the 1960s he ran the Yardarm, a blackjack and roulette club on a converted barge moored on the Thames in London; patrons included the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. For a time he also ran a jazz club in the capital.

After selling Gravetye (he had bought out Robin Howard in the early Seventies), he retired in 2004, but continued to live in a cottage on the estate.

In the 1980s Herbert served as chairman of the British arm of Relais & Châteaux, the association of individually owned and run luxury hotels and restaurants.

He was a devoted supporter of Glyndebourne, a keen fly fisherman, and enjoyed sailing at Rock in the Camel estuary. Above all, however, he loved food and wine.

Peter Herbert is survived by his second wife Sue (née Hicks) and their two daughters, and by the two sons and one daughter of his first marriage.